


a soft epilogue

by tsunderestorm



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11702175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: Sometimes loss is only temporary, Ignis knows, though he isn't entirely sure how he does. All he knows is that not even death can hold him back.





	a soft epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> I know everyone has written a reincarnation fic, and that it was even one of the situational prompts for this week. I confess, my sole reason for posting it for days 6 + 7 were that I thought the second part fit the "scars" prompt nicely and that the quote that inspired the first part tied in too nicely with "stars and sea". I only regret that I wasn't able to contribute more for this week but I am very fond of this little one-shot.
> 
> The tag for implied/referenced suicide should be heeded - it is mentioned in passing (and does not apply to either of the characters in the pairing tag) but if these types of thoughts make you uncomfortable, proceed with caution.

**They say that when you die, your soul goes back to the sea. Do you hear the rushing in your ears? Those are the waves, calling you into the dark. But the ocean’s grip cannot match mine, and I will drag you back to the shore – to me.** ” – _Poseidon will not take you away, not while I still live, c.k._

Ignis aches for Noctis like a missing limb. He remembers everything about him: his pretty blue eyes, his hair soft between his fingers, the body his hands had memorized long before they were his only way of seeing. The way the prince had felt so much and never mastered the ways to express even half of it. How the history books even now had started writing of the Chosen King, of the man whose bravery and selflessness but knew nothing of the boy who loved cheap convenience store fries and whose humor consisted of fishing puns. The boy who could name every constellation by heart, the boy whose fingers fit perfectly into the spaces between Ignis’s own.

Even ten, twenty years later Ignis’s body, his heart, his _soul_ misses him in ways that he doesn’t think he can truly get anyone to understand. The ache is fresh. Raw, like an open wound, bleeding a bit more each year until he feels like he'll have nothing left. He can’t listen to Noct’s last wishes, he can’t walk tall. He'd always thought he understood, that he'd accepted it: Noctis’s fate, laid out in a chain before him, a path never to err from. But love - it makes you do foolish things.

Angelgard is an enigma looming in the distance. He remembers seeing it from the dock at Galdin Quay, rock wings curling upward, shrouded in fog on days the sky was cold and grey. It looks no different now, Gladiolus tells him, the same old rock it's always been - is he sure? _Yes, yes_ ; he says, _I'm sure_. As if he hasn't turned this idea over and over like a worry stone in his palm, felt the once-jagged edges of recklessness smoothed by time and deep thought. As if this one small hope is not the only thing he’s been clinging to, as if he hasn’t died a tiny death every single day he’s woken up in his bed at the Citadel without the man who should have been his husband at his side, sleep-warm and _safe._

Reassured, Gladiolus takes his arm and leads him to the boat tied and waiting for them, guiding him expertly over the craggy stone. The ocean is clear today, he can tell - he can hear the soft sound of the waves as they gently rock the boat, the wet slurp as water is trapped between it and the dock. Thirty-odd years was a lifetime ago and if the shoreline has changed, he can’t see it - but gods, if he listens it’s like he can hear the faintest exhale of Noct’s breath in the breeze blowing in from the sea. Like he’s still here, somewhere. They are in their fifties, now: old bones and weary souls with lives lived too long with too much heartache. Giving up seems easier now than twenty years ago: he's seen Insomnia rebuilt and stabilized Lucis, he's rebuilt what Niflheim stole from Noctis. From _them._

“It's hard to believe this was the first place he saw after ten years,” Gladiolus says when the boat runs ashore on the island. “Not a very good view.”

Ignis offers a thoughtful _hmm_ and listens. He expects the sounds of sighing, the thousands of spirits gathered in this place, expects to hear the mournful sobs of souls that swam around Noctis when he'd used that ring that helped kill him.

“Wonder if these swords are the Draconian’s, you know?” Gladio is walking away from him, Ignis can tell, but he doesn’t follow. “They're pretty huge - uh, Iggy?”

Ignis kneels, folding his legs beneath him and setting the cane on the ground. “Bahamut,” he says, quietly. “If you're listening, I don’t accept this. I need him. Damn you, I need him _back_.”

Bahamut descends with a _thud_ , marginally smaller than his last appearance if Ignis had to guess. Impressive still, he assumes as he hears Gladiolus suck in a breath from somewhere off to his side. Ever the watchful Shield, never far away though he was never meant to guard a Scientia, only a Caelum. “The King of Light was foretold, and it was with his sacrifice -”

“No.”

Ignis knows it to be bold, even downright rude. Dangerous business too, interrupting an astral. “ _Noctis._ Your King wasn’t just a prophetic _tool_ and he was no pawn on your divine chessboard, he was...” Ignis is glad for Gladio’s hand on his shoulder: firm and strong, even after all these years. “He fulfilled his duty splendidly and with no protest. Not once did he question the fate laid out for him before he could even comprehend it. His young life was taken from him and you need to _give it back_. I know you can, Draconian. _I know you can_. ”

Bahamut is quiet for a few very long moments and Ignis wonders, dimly, if he's going to die here. Cold and humbled, a pile of bones on an island prison. “I admire your devotion,” the god says after a silence that lasts millennia. “So rarely do I see a love that could turn the tides of the sea or shake the stars from distant sky.”

Ignis rises on shaking legs, aided by Gladiolus. He wants to speak - to ask if admiration was enough to sway him, if love was enough to call back a soul from nonexistence. To breathe life back into a body that’s long-since decayed or grant a new one.

“But what is done is done. The sun is returned, and with it the brightest light of the night sky is gone. You, Sword, know this as well as the King’s Shield.”

Gladio’s hand leaves Ignis’s shoulder and he can hear the crunch of rock under his boots as he steps forward. Predatory, accusing in the way he has; more so now that he’s emotional. “Yeah, I know. I had to lift his body off that throne he died on for you. Listen, here's the deal: you're gonna give him back or we're gonna -”

Ignis reaches out a hand and clutches Gladio's forearm. It's reassuring to feel the frantic beat of his pulse when his grip slides to his wrist, to feel the warmth of his skin among the foggy cold that permeates the island. Reassuring when Gladio’s calloused fingers slip between his own, lacing them tightly.

“You knew of this when you chose to love him. Crystal-blessed, the King was alway doomed. This is the way it was foretold. The King of Light quells the flames of the Infernian, his Light sears the Scourge from the world. You love what was mortal knowing one day you would let it go.”

“Is that supposed to be poetic?” Gladio spits. Bahamut laughs, an odd sound. Unexpected, unreadable, and Ignis bristles at the sound.

“I cannot change what has passed or return the King to you. I can offer a promise, however, when the time comes - well, it is always better, in the next life.”

With that, he is gone in a flash of light so bright Ignis can feel its warmth and Gladio shoves the sword into the ground in a fit of frustration. They leave with empty hands and empty hearts, and Gladiolus seems to find the boat harder to row this time. Ignis can feel the wind shift, the air turning back to Galdin Quay’s balmy breezes from the chill wind that had swirled around the rock.It matches the cold in his heart, he thinks, the salt spray carrying the taste of bitter defeat.

“I can't believe we threatened the Draconian.” Gladio's smiling as he says it, Ignis knows, confirmed when he reaches out a hand and cups his chin, thumb against the wrinkles that have been etched around his mouth. So handsome, even when the years have bled laughter from his days.

“I would threaten the Six all at once for Noctis,” Ignis says, unwavering. “I would challenge any god who stood between us, Gladiolus. I would pull the stars from the sky so that he had light to find his way home.”

He walks his way to the car by himself, leaving Gladiolus in stunned silence. Gladiolus knows Ignis isn't doing well, and Ignis doesn't care that he knows. He sits in Noctis’s tomb, sometimes; the mausoleum where the Caelum ancestors sleep, elegant swirled patterns decorating the edge of the most extravagant coffin in the place. Inside, a broken body that Gladio remembers pulling bloodied from the throne and carrying out of the palace. So light he'd been, then - somehow still the heaviest weight he'd ever carried. How Ignis had never let go of his cold, lifeless hand, how Gladio had thought dimly that although Ignis had known all along what fate awaited him he must never have really _accepted_ it. He can’t blame him - he knows how well love works with denial; how they share a home in the heart.

He has his own plans for when this is all over, for when the first Lucian king not of Caelum blood no longer needs a Shield. Plans that involve a sharp sword and the familiar taste of failure. He’s not the first Amicitia to fail, but gods, he's undoubtedly the one who took it the hardest. He's a servant without a master, a Shield without a King, and living this long for Ignis is a favor for an old friend, a distraction as he prolongs the inevitable.

Ignis dies when he is sixty-two, just as summer is winding down to a close. It is September, seven days after what would have been Noct’s sixtieth birthday. When there’s no life left in him, Gladiolus sees he is interred in the royal tomb beside Noctis: his husband in death the way the honor was stolen from him in life.

\--

 **“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough.”** – _Seventy Years of Seep # 4_ , Nikka Ursula

“Where did you get them?” Ignis asks, reaching out a tentative hand to feel the marks on Noctis’s chest. He can feel that they are ugly, terrifying things, these birthmarks - a jagged web of them that feels like a war zone beneath his fingertips. Noctis’s chest is a battle scar from a mortal wound, evidence of a blade to the heart and Ignis wonders, not for the first time, how kindly Noct's lifetime prior to this one treated his little prince. About as kindly as it treated him, he supposes, dimly reminded of the marks that mar the left side of his face, of the vision he’s never had.

In a way, it doesn't matter. That was before and this is now, and Ignis can press his mouth to the puffy skin and feel the flutter of Noct's heartbeat against his lips. It’s dizzying to feel every breath he takes. It makes him lightheaded to feel him so wonderfully, beautifully _alive_.

Noctis shrugs, a customary answer for him. “I don't know. Born with them, I guess. I don’t remember.”

(Truth be told, all Noctis remembers is darkness. Darkness, then light. Of dawn breaking as he fought to breathe, heaving labored breaths through collapsed lungs. A ring, burning a brand into his skin. Thirteen flashes of blinding steel, then pain. Hot, sharp, terrible pain. His dad’s face, obscured in the light, a final, fourteenth stab and nothing after.

He has no true memories of _before_ ; no memories of who he was before the car accident that landed him in the Fleuret family hospital, no memories of why his father sometimes holds him _so close_ he can barely breathe, why he seems scared to let him go. No, he doesn't know where his scars comes from, or if they’re even scars.)

“I've always had them, I don't know….”

“They seem so painful.” Ignis says, fingertips brushing over them again, mapping the edges before dipping his head to mouth over them, to press the tiniest of kisses across Noctis’s chest to hear him hum contentedly in response.

“Sometimes I hurt,” Noctis said, hand coming to rest on top of Ignis’s head. He hesitates for a moment and then runs his fingers through it - unstyled, it's soft and soothing to the touch.“I have these dreams, you know? Flashes of these horrible monsters that come out because the sun never rises. Stupid, huh?”

Ignis stills for a moment, sliding his hand between their bodies to curl his fingers into the spaces between Noct’s. A perfect fit.

“Hardly,” he says. “Everyone has a fear. It just happens that mine isn't an event or a creature in particular. I would say that mine is losing you.”

(Again, he almost says. It's a terrifying thought, a new one. One he doesn’t think he’s supposed to have. He remembers, vaguely, a being - _a god? -_ whose wings stirred the heavens, whose voice made his head hurt with the power of it. Remembers fire and a sunrise so bright he could feel it on his skin even if he couldn't see it rise in the east.)

“Pretty lame fear,” Noctis says as he folds into the embrace, circling his around around Ignis's shoulders and resting his head on his, mumbling his next words into his hair. “Why couldn't you be scared of something normal like spiders or the dark?”

Ignis’s answer is simple and heartfelt: “Because even the little things that may scare me seem insignificant as long as I have you.”

Noctis makes a disgruntled mumble and scrunches his face up playfully, burying his face in Ignis’s hair and Ignis thanks the gods every day for a second chance, for his prince sleeping soundly in his arms, for the opportunity to try again with no plague and no surprise treaty, no weight on Noct's shoulders dragging him down. For feeling Noct sigh and shudder under his hands and not worrying about what anyone else would think, for _love_ , pure and simple. For the stone on Noctis’ left hand that he’s told glints like a rainbow is trapped inside when the sun hits it, for Noctis’s mail showing up addressed to _Noctis Scientia_.

Sometimes loss is only temporary, Ignis knows, though he isn't entirely sure how he does. All he knows is that not even death can hold him back.


End file.
